Thank you to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors for their foresight and speedy enactment of a county-wide mask/face-covering mandate – that supersedes all communities with a lesser or no policy – to protect everyone in our county from our state’s skyrocketing rates of COVID-19 cases and deaths by slowing its spread of transmission.

Thank you also to Fountain Hills Mayor Ginny Dickey and Council Members Alan Magazine and Sherry Leckrone for voting yes; prioritizing and upholding their sworn oath, duty and responsibility to protect the common good, public health and safety of all of residents and visitors of our town.

We have laws to wear seatbelts, not drink and drive, follow traffic laws, take our shoes off and go through TSA screening in airports and many more, all implemented to protect the common good, health and safety.

Mask/face-covering wearing has been indisputably and overwhelmingly scientifically and statistically proven to slow the transmission/spread of COVID-19. The Coronavirus is the most serious, highly contagious and deadly nationwide/global pandemic in 100 years. The U.S. has the highest number of cases in the world with an average of 24,000 cases daily in June versus the entire European Union of similar size with only 4,000.

The only proven way we are going to be able to slow the rate of transmission/spread of COVID-19 and keep the economy somewhat open – or face a complete lockdown again – is to start wearing masks/face-coverings and following all the public health experts’ forecasts and recommendations, period.

Yet, Vice Mayor Mike Scharnow and Council Members Dennis Brown, Art Tolis and David Spelich chose to vote no, prioritizing whatever their personal, insufficient, misguided or questionable motives or reasoning, casting their sworn oath aside on this serious, deadly issue and not protect all in our town.

Voters will remember how our council voted.